VIDEO: The 10-Minute Film That RTÉ Has Banned Until The Referendum Is Over

The film has won multiple awards so far.
Darragh Berry
April 19, 2018

'Terminal' a film which outlines the day in the life of someone who has to leave the country in order to have an abortion will not be shown by RTÉ until the referendum is over.

In the film "a girl and a woman meet in an airport departure gate. Just before they board a plane to Manchester, we witness a private exchange as they share the different reasons that brought them to this moment, and the traumatic journey that awaits them."

The hateful Eighth: artists at the frontline of Ireland's abortion rights battle
As campaigning on both sides of Ireland’s abortion debate intensifies ahead of the May referendum, artists in Limerick are taking to the streets

Emine Saner
Thu 12 Apr 2018

On the road to Limerick from the airport, you can see two huge billboards funded by a Christian lobby group. One shows a foetus at 11 weeks’ gestation with the words “one of us”. Another shows a man saying he would never forget what he saw while working in an operating theatre where abortions were taking place (though the poster implies he was a nurse, the hospital revealed he was a porter). It is six weeks until the referendum in Ireland on whether the eighth amendment to the constitution – which essentially gave a foetus the same rights as the woman carrying it – should be repealed, and the campaigning on both sides is intensifying.

What would America look like if abortion were made illegal again?
Leni Zumas third novel, Red Clocks, has been described as a successor to The Handmaid’s Tale

Apr 2, 2018
Tanya Sweeney

Given that her third novel has landed bang on the zeitgeist, it’s almost astonishing to think that Leni Zumas began writing it seven years ago.

The novel, Red Clocks, pivots on a simple conceit – what would America look like if abortion were made illegal again? – and has been described as a successor to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, or Naomi Alderman’s The Power.

The comparisons sit well with Zumas, a relative newcomer: “It feels flattering and kind of scary,” she admits.

This Virtual Reality Flick Shows What It’s Like to Have an Unwanted Pregnancy
A Polish-Canadian filmmaker wants to demonstrate the difference between having an opinion on abortion and *actually* experiencing an unwanted pregnancy

Mar 16, 2018
Lindsay Pinter

Imagine waking up in a pregnant body that isn’t yours—and then being faced with a difficult decision about whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. It sounds like the premise of a sci-fi flick, but it’s actually the opening moments of a new virtual reality documentary currently in the works.

The Choice lets viewers step into the consciousness of a pregnant woman who is debating whether or not she should have an abortion. With the help of special VR goggles, viewers can actually look down to see the simulation of a slight computer-generated bump where their stomach should be, giving the appearance that they themselves are pregnant.

Why You Need To Watch BBC Two's New Programme On Abortion This Weekend
This weekend, the BBC welcomes a live performance using real-life testimonies from 50 women around the world on the subject of abortion. Here's why it's a must-see.

By Katie O'Malley
Jan 19, 2018

If it's not you it was your mum, sister, best friend or colleague.

According to the UK's leading abortion care service BPAS, one in three women will have an abortion by the time they are 45-years-old.

However, for a procedure that's statistically provided to more women than caesarean sections, abortion remains a taboo subject in society, with some women choosing to keep their terminations a secret for fear of vilification and deep-rooted shame.

USA -The effect of a documentary: Charlotte, NC
Dec 12, 2017
by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion

Care in Chaos, a documentary by the US feminist news wire, Rewire, recently received the “Best Documentary Short” award from the Nevada Film Festival. It examines how policing practices and policies in Charlotte, North Carolina and Fargo, North Dakota impede or facilitate access to reproductive health care. Providers throughout the country work every day to serve patients, often under siege from an anti-choice movement driven by ideology and disrespect for women’s lives. As Care in Chaos shows, local authorities can make the difference in whether women can obtain critical care.

Right after the documentary’s release, they write, they saw real policy action. The city of Charlotte revised its sound permits to stop anti-choice protesters harassing patients and staff with loudspeakers and amplifiers. Now it’s easier for women in Charlotte to access comprehensive reproductive healthcare.

The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Secret Abortionist (Exclusive Book Excerpt)
by Stephen G. Bloom
December 04, 2017

Before Roe v. Wade, Inez Burns became wealthy performing abortions for movie stars and the poor. Some thought she was doing a public service. But to future Gov. Pat Brown, she was a menace.

"This case is going farther than anybody thinks," San Francisco District Attorney Edmund G. (Pat) Brown teased reporters at an October 1945 press conference designed to snare as much publicity as publicity-hungry Brown could summon. Ambitious and enterprising, the 40-year-old was going gangbusters to put Inez Burns, one of California's most politically connected women, behind bars.

There was nothing illegal about knowing everyone who was anyone in California, but there was plenty illegal about exactly how millionaire Inez had joined the state's wealthiest women. For two decades, she had owned and operated the largest and most successful abortion clinic in California. Spick-and-span sterile and hygienic, Inez's clinic looked more like an elegant ladies' tearoom than a facility for terminating pregnancies.

Anne Robinson’s country pile was the unlikely venue for a weekend of heated debates on pregnancy termination in Abortion on Trial (BBC Two). Robinson, who it transpired had an abortion in 1968, just a few months after they were partially legalised, invited eight women and one man to lounge around in her lovely Gloucestershire home while discussing their strong views on the subject.

At the more extreme end of the scale was Rachel, a vehemently pro-life 47 year old teacher – vehemently pro-life, it turned out, as a result of her regrets over her own two terminations. “I murdered my children” she said, although later backtracked on her use of the word “murder”.

Shona Craven: Knowledge is power, so it's time to talk honestly about abortion

28th September, 2017

YOU’VE only read the headline, but your hackles might already be up. What knowledge, exactly? What power? And how many paragraphs before the big reveal? For or against, “foetus” or “baby”, right or wrong. I don’t blame you. When people start talking about the reality of abortion, I get suspicious too.

It took a show at last month’s Edinburgh Fringe to make me realise how little I actually knew about this subject. Sure, like any good feminist I knew the basics of the Abortion Act 1967, passed 50 years ago next month. I knew about the pickets, the posters, the religious extremists lobbying to retain laws branded cruel and degrading by the UN. But I remained largely ignorant when it came to the messy, bloody, psychological and emotional reality of this procedure.